McChrystal Retires, Serves Up a Rolling Stone Quip

Posted on Jul 24, 2010

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates awards the Distinguished Service Medal to Gen. Stanley McChrystal as he is honored at a retirement ceremony at Fort McNair in Washington on Friday.

Goodbye, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, soldier in the U.S. Army for three decades and the former head of the NATO operation in Afghanistan. McChrystal was ingloriously deposed after Rolling Stone magazine revealed his loose-tongued, insubordinate streak. —JCL

Los Angeles Times:

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal said goodbye to the Army on Friday in a poignant ceremony that paid tribute to his three decades of military service and barely mentioned his firing by President Obama for insubordination.

It was McChrystal who alluded most directly to his own precipitous fall, standing at the podium and looking out at formations of soldiers and former comrades.

“Service in this business is tough and often dangerous, and it extracts a price for participation, and that price can be high,” McChrystal said. “If I had it to do over again, I’d do some things in my career differently, but not many.”

[...] “This has the potential to be an awkward, even sad, occasion,” McChrystal said, beginning his remarks with an allusion to the circumstances of his departure.

But he tried to puncture the tension with a joke, telling the crowd that if anyone challenged the war stories he was about to tell, “I know a Rolling Stone reporter.”

hello again. the drugs are run by the DEA. the
military secures the trade routes for the DEA. this
general acquired medals for implementing new tactics
to subdue a new enemy, which were good in Iraq, and
inappropriate in Afghanistan. the enemy of the
military needs the illegal drug market to purchase
the weaponry needed to resupply opposition to the
military, so it is a self perpetuating complex of
human slaughter and weaponry profits. the military
protects the illegal drug routes into the United
States to provide the money needed for their enemies
to purchase the weapons they need to fight our
military. these drug wars distract from the Wall
Street ambitions of natural gas and oil contracts
that they use the military to obtain. legalize the
drugs, and suddenly Wall Street will have a lot of
explaining to do, such as in Yemen today. this
general was doing what he did to the best of his
ability under order of our government, and killing
people was his job. if you do not understand honor
amongst noble individuals, perhaps it is because you
can not relate to the concept.

I’m overseas this summer and get to see a lot of BBC and Aljazeera ( I also get to see Fox but I wouldn’t call that serious journalism). On these stations I’m able receive thorough coverage of American soldiers in combat in Afganistan. It’s almost laughable how confused and clueless they look. There is no way coalion forces can “win” there.Obama knows this too but is too gutless to withdrawal or at least stop the drone attacks. So this nonsense will continue for another 5-10 years and more generations of Americans will not know what it means for a country to be at peace. What a joke of a country the US has become. Someday the US government will have to prevent its citizens from traveling abroad. There they may see what a decent social safety net looks like, see green technology, and ,most importantly, countries built on humanistic values all things the US sorely lacks.

Well, as an outsider, (not an American), may I make a small observation. This debate about Mc Chrystal being a good general, bad general, is academic. The fact of the matter is, the American Army, its fighting force is America. But this aspect of America is sort of cutoff and exists in a kind of parallel universe. All those young Americans who cannot find a job on the economy join “off their own fee will” (sic). That is why America will never reintroduce conscription/the draft, because it brings American imperialism into American society proper. The dead, the amputees, the mentally disturbed, would be made more visible.

Plus the fact that the dollar is the world’s reserve currency: still. So its imperial adventures can be paid for by just printing more money. But when Rumsfeld fired General Eric Shinseki (quite a different general to Mc Chrystal) there was not such a big hullaballoo. What eight years of Bush has done is purge the Army of its best generals. The Hill has also been purged.

i am often wrong, but i still believe this was an honorable servant of the people and the President, whom just could not morally stomach securing trade routes for heroin . . .

A man who said, “We’ve shot an amazing number of people”, meaning “we’ve shot an amazing number of innocent people”, is not bothered by the heroin trade. There is nothing honorable about being an imperialist occupier who is going to make the dark heathens straighten up and fly right, even if we have to kill them in the process. Cunning jokers like McChrystal always remind me of bombastic sportscasters with their tough talking macho slang. In reality, Stan the Man is just another Jonah dragging the United States down into the mud and its own destruction. The military, like the political institutions of this nation, are designed to be controlled by sociopaths. McChrystal will now slide with the greatest of ease from the military into politics.

“McChrystal was also criticized for his role in the aftermath of the 2004 death by friendly fire of Ranger and former professional football player Pat Tillman. Within a day of Tillman’s death, McChrystal was notified that Tillman was a victim of fratricide. Shortly thereafter, McChrystal was put in charge of paperwork to award Tillman a posthumous Silver Star for valor.

On April 28, 2004, six days after Tillman’s death, McChrystal approved a final draft of the Silver Star recommendation and submitted it to the acting Secretary of the Army, even though the medal recommendation deliberately omitted any mention of friendly fire, included the phrase “in the line of devastating enemy fire”, and was accompanied by fabricated witness statements.

On April 29, McChrystal sent an urgent memo warning White House speechwriters not to quote the medal recommendation in any statements they wrote for President Bush because it “might cause public embarrassment if the circumstances of Corporal Tillman’s death become public.” McChrystal was one of eight officers recommended for discipline by a subsequent Pentagon investigation but the Army declined to take action against him.[6][20][21][22]”

hello. i am often wrong, but i still believe this was an honorable servant of the people and the President, whom just could not morally stomach securing trade routes for heroin, which he knew was winding up in the bellies of American children he was supposed to be protecting. he could sanction murdering enemies, but it twisted his conscience beyond restraint to be so deeply involved in the illegal drug trade. that is why i believe he gave the interview with “Rolling Stone”. i do not like not ever being told the truth, because even the bravest of our men fear for their own future.

Then again, maybe we should all rot with him. For it is we who placed him in power, and removed his leash, and set him brutally upon all enemies, real and perseived. His actions in Iraq and Afghanistan belittle us all. He should have been drummed out, stripped of his rank, and flogged. But then again, it would be a flogging of us all, well deserved.

“Over the past decade, no single individual has inflicted more fear and more loss of life on our country’s most vicious and violent enemies than Stan McChrystal,” Gates said.” What a way to be remembered!
Behind the screen: For how many “past decades” what is the total kill record of the U.S.? How many were “vicious and violent” women and childlren? What have we gained from “inflicting more fear and more loss of life” on “vicious and violent enemies”? How many soldiers are presently suffering from PTSD, or walking around with artificial limbs, as a result of “inflicting more fear and more loss of life”? How many have been killed before they had a chance to live? How many ...walks in the park ... inventions .. art works… love songs ..
weddings ..ideas ...discoveries ...lullabies…have been killed ...?